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One Philip Payne has written an article in which he finds a way to claim that Paul is not preventing women from teaching here, but only preventing women from teaching in a way that would include them having authority over men. The full article is here:

Paul typically uses οὐδέ to convey a single idea, as do the two closest syntacticalparallels to 1 Tim 2.12. In the overwhelming majority of Paul’s and the NT’s οὐ...οὐδέ...ἀλλά syntactical constructions, οὐδέ joins two expressions to convey a single idea in sharp contrast to the following ἀλλά statement. Furthermore, the earliest known commentary on 1 Tim 2.12, Origen’s, treats it as a single prohibition.Accordingly, the most natural reading of 1 Tim 2.12 conveys, ‘I am not permitting awoman to teach and [in combination with this] to assume authority over a man’.

There are many problematic things about this article. In fact, I think it is a textbook instance of all the bad things one can do with Greek to get to the "real meaning" behind the text. I won't go in to all of them right now. If someone wants to defend Payne, I can go through and show how fallacious are his methods and conclusions, but for now I just want to confirm my own sense that it is virtually impossible to understand this passage to mean "I do not permit women to teach with authority over men," "I do not permit women to teach in a way that involves them having authority over men," and that in fact the only natural way to construe the text is "I do not permit women to teach and I do not permit women to have authority over men."

Again, Payne is claiming that the text should be understood as if Paul wrote:

But that cannot be right, right? οὐ... οὐδέ...ἀλλά cannot work that way, right? You can't say, that is,

οὐ θέλω ἐσθίειν κρέας οὐδέ πίνειν γάλα, ἀλλὰ ἐσθίειν μόνα λάχανα.

and have it mean "I don't want to eat meat and at the same time drink milk, (i.e. mix milk and meat) but I rather I want to only eat veggies" instead of "I don't want to eat meat, neither do I want to drink milk, but only to eat veggies." It's not possible, is it, to read this sentence and construe it that I don't mind eating meat as long as I don't do it along with drinking milk? (This is what Payne does with 1 Tim 2:12)

I want to be sure that I am not overreacting to how wrong I think Payne gets this. It seems to me that no one who really knows Greek could possible read the text the way he does, that this supremely fails the smell test. I would like those whose Greek is pretty good to take a look at this and tell me what you think.

(Just as a point of order, I happen to agree largely with Payne that men and women should have equal roles in the Church, and I also find this to be a "hard" saying. I would be forced to come up with my own solution to this problem. I just think that Payne does monstrous damage to the Greek here.)

It is noticeable that, despite the fact that his whole argument rests on the meaning or force of οὐδέ, he never refers to what the lexicons say the word means. When it follows a negative clause, all the lexicons agree that it means 'or', or 'nor', or 'and not', or 'also not' - it adds a second negative to the first one. The grammars (Smyth, Robertson) emphasize its origin as οὐ δέ, and not surprisingly it seems to have a similar range as δέ: BDAG giving '1. and not, nor: joins negative sentences or clauses to others of the same kind. 2. also not, not either, neither.'

Smyth: 'οὐδέ (μηδέ) as a conjunction (and not, nor connects two or more whole clauses.' Winer-Moulton: 'οὐδέ, μηδέ .. add negation to negation.' Robertson: 'In accord with the copulative use of δέ we frequently have οὐδέ and μηδέ in the continuative sense, carrying on the negative with no idea of contrast.'

οὐδέ adds one negative to another, it doesn't subtract, as Payne tries to make it do. One of the scary things about his paper is that having asserted, without any evidence, that this previously unknown force or meaning of οὐδέ exists, he then applies it to a number of other bible passages and gives them a previously unknown sense, whereupon he proceeds to use them as evidence for the existence of this new sense of οὐδέ.

he says that Paul actually did consult with flesh and blood in Damascus, since he consulted with Ananias (!), so the meaning is something like 'I did not consult with flesh and blood by going up to Jerusalem..':

He does this with Galatians 3:28, saying that actually there are Jew and Gentile in Christ, but not a Jew-and-Gentile distinction. Also in Romans 9:6, Payne says it does depend on man's will, but not on will-and-effort combined!

It's a bit like going to a restaurant, saying 'no salt and pepper, thanks' and being given salt, and on enquiry being told that they thought it was just the combination of salt and pepper you didn't want. Except in that case, they might be able to make a grammatical case for it, since 'and' can do that, at a pinch, which is more than can be said for οὐδέ.

Thanks for your thoughts, Andrew. I'm glad to know that I am not the only one who finds the paper scary. I agree he mangles the passage from Galatians 1 in just the manner you have spelled out. The passage from Polybius also fails to support his flawed case. I hate to be uncharitable, but I wonder how well he knows Greek.

And yes, you could do the exact same thing to someone's English, but it would never pass the smell test. Payne can get away with this type of thing, I guess, because the vast majority of people who will read his books don't know Greek or don't know it well. It is scary, though, that this article was not peer reviewed, although it is being done so now, which is one of the good things about public forums like this.

Again, Payne's motives are good; what he and so many others do to Greek really does, with all due respect, stink.

As they wished none of the kings and princes to despair of gaining their help and alliance, they did not desire to run in harness with Rome and engage themselves by oaths and treaties, but preferred to remain unembarrassed and able to reap profit from any quarter.

συνδυάζειν is 'to join one to one, couple', Liddell and Scott.

Payne wants this to mean that they didn't want to harness themselves to Rome by [laying hold of themselves in advance] with oaths and treaties. That would make good sense, if οὐδέ had that force, but it doesn't, and the translators don't render it that way. Instead they append one negative to another. Sure, the second one may have the effect of specifying more exactly what is meant, but that is because of the content of the clause, with its specific mention of oaths and treaties: it's not οὐδέ that does that.

And what Payne would need in this example, is for the text to mean that they would be quite happy to harness themselves to Rome, so long as it didn't involve engaging themselves with oaths and treaties. But it is saying the opposite: A) they didn't want to harness themselves; B) they didn't want to engage themselves with oaths and treaties. B reinforces A, perhaps it explains it to some degree, but then again it might be adding a different aspect - I think προκαταλαμβάνειν [ἑαυτόν] may have the force of committing oneself in advance to something (as one does with treaties and oaths). I think συνδυάζειν probably comes from δύο, hence 'couple'. Then we would two aspects of making an alliance: coupling and pre-committal. So the sentence makes perfectly good sense if οὐδέ is given its usual meaning.

Yes, Andrew, your analysis of the Polybius passage is spot on. I have nothing to add.

Let me say something else about Payne's flawed methodology. He says on the first page of the article:

In the overwhelming majority of Paul’s and the NT’s οὐ...οὐδέ...ἀλλά syntactical constructions, οὐδέ joins two expressions to convey a single idea in sharp contrast to the following οὐδέ statement.

First of all, as so happens with these types of linguistic analysis, the subjectivity is obvious. In many instances--maybe in most instances--a case can be made on both sides whether the two negated items are distinct ideas or combine to form one idea. In the passage you mentioned earlier from Gal 1, for example, I would argue that "going up to Jerusalem" and "consulting with flesh and blood" are two separate, though obviously related, ideas.

Secondly, Payne admits that in one instance Paul does use οὐδέ to negate separate ideas.

Payne obviously cannot argue that Paul means that "our exhortation was not a deceitful, unclean error," because this would lead to the response "Well, your exhortation was not deceitful or unclean, but is was an error." Paul would obvious deny that it was any of these things.

So, if Paul can use οὐδὲ to negate two separate ideas once, of course he can use it twice, so what's the point of the rest of the analysis?

Third, let's say that everywhere Paul in fact only used οὐδὲ to negate two closely related ideas, still the sample size would be too small. Payne comes up with 21 uses of the construction. If I use a construction 20 times in one way, why in the world can't I use it a different way the 21th time? We do this all the time.

Fourth, the οὐ...οὐδέ...ἀλλά construction is in fact super common. Would it make any sense for Paul, or any other writer, to use it with one particular tendency or another, let alone in a way that is bizarrely at odds with how the construction is ordinary used.

We never do this in English. If we are trying to determine what a writer means, we never go back and pore over his use of a given construction, make up a "rule" for how he uses it, and then use this rule to over-ride the normal grammar and the context. Here, I can even give you an example of how we would never do this to living writer in Ancient Greek.

This reinforced for me how common the οὐ...οὐδέ...ἀλλά is. In fact, what Vladimir wrote is a very close parallel to 1 Tim 2:12, and it shows that you do not have to search very far to find parallels. To this extant I have no idea why Payne makes such a big deal about the Polybius passage. I am sure that you can find many, many other parallels. Anyway, it's pretty clear what Vladimir meant: "I don't want the Ukraine to join the E.U... nor do I want them to them to be a certain union with Russia, but rather, according to me, the Ukraine should keep for herself a middle position having all her neighbors as friends."

Now, there no way that Vladimir meant: "I don't want the Ukraine to join the E.U. and at the same time be in union with Russia" because that would not make any sense. But if we wanted to figure out if he did in fact mean this, would there be any reason to examine his previous to Greek to see how he uses the οὐ...οὐδέ...ἀλλά elsewhere? What would be the point of that? Sometimes he is going to use the construction to negate two separate ideas, sometimes to negate two ideas that combine to form one. This is how natural language works.

This is what really bothers me about Payne's approach, which is by no means unique to him. Rather than treating Greek as a natural language, the Greek is picked apart, reference works are consulted (incorrectly, as you pointed out in the post on B-Greek,) grammatical linguistical "rules" are developed and the natural meaning of the text is ignored and distorted.

I'm piling on Payne, maybe, but, as you can see, a nerve has been struck here.

Last edited by Markos on Thu Dec 05, 2013 3:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks, Markos, and I like your example from Vladimir about the Ukraine. I also agree that it seems really strange to even talk about Paul using οὐ .. οὐδέ in some way characteristic to him alone. These are such simple and basic words, it seems like writing a thesis comparing the way Shakespeare and Dickens use the word 'and'. Actually, the dictionaries do distinguish between differences in force that 'and' may have, for example:

a) used to connect two clauses when the second refers to something that happened after the first: he turned around and walked out.

b) used to connect two clauses, the second of which refers to something that results from the first: do that once more and I will skin you alive.

But both these come under the same heading - conjunction (1) - and I think one might say that the meaning of 'and' is the same in a) and b) - it just adds one clause to another. The listener understands that b) involves consequence from the meaning of the two clauses, not from the meaning of 'and'.

With regard to 1 Thessalonians 2:3, Payne actually makes a case that all three terms - ἐκ πλάνης, ἐξ ἀκαθαρσίας, and ἐν δόλῳ are saying much the same thing:

Both the first (πλάνη) and third (δόλος) nouns οὐδέ joins commonly mean ‘deceit’ (BDAG 822, 256), which fits this context perfectly. The second (ἀκαθαρσία) identifies impure motives (BDAG 34), so each points to impure intent.

First of all, 'deceit' is not at all a motive. Take Ananias and Sapphira, their motive may have been greed or reputation. Their method to achieve that was to use deception.

Second, he has failed to distinguish between the active and passive sense of 'deceit'. BAGD at least (which is what I have to hand) makes it very clear, and it would be surprising if Payne missed this:

πλάνη, ης, ἡ .. wandering, roaming, in our literature only figuratively of wandering from the path of truth, error, delusion, deceit, deception to which one is subject

Right at the end of the entry on πλάνη is this:

πλάνη τοῦ ὄφεως Dg 12:3 is probably not active, meaning deceiving by the serpent, but the deceit or error originated by it;

and that is the closest it gets to an active sense. δόλος, on the other hand, according to BAGD, means 'deceit, cunning, treachery' in the active sense, which is a very different thing.

Payne says on page 241 that it is 'ambiguous' whether these are three ideas or one idea, or something in between; and then on the next page says that:

There is not even one unambiguous case where Paul uses οὐδέ to join conceptually distinctconcepts to convey two separate ideas

I agree with you that 1 Thessalonians 2:3 alone disproves this.

Finally, to reiterate the point we are both making, even if ἐκ πλάνη, ἐξ ἀκαθαρσίας, and ἐν δόλῳ did (for sake of argument) mean exactly the same thing, or if they did all 'convey a single internally-cohering idea' [Payne p.241], it wouldn't actually help Payne's case, since whatever the relation between the three terms, it is obvious that Paul is disavowing all three.

They really are, and I think they work pretty much the same in English and in Greek. In English you might say:

"I don't want to go out and dance tonight."

This MIGHT mean that you don't mind going out to do something else, as long as you don't dance, or it might not. Grammar cannot decide this, only the context. "I would never let my kids drink and drive." Would you allow them to drink as long as they don't drive? The grammar (let alone previous ways that you use the word "and!") cannot decide this. It cannot decide this in English and it cannot decide this in Greek If Paul had written

works just the same way as "I don't want to go out tonight, nor do I want to dance." This CANNOT mean, in English "I don't mind going out and doing something else." And 1 Tim 2:12 CANNOT mean in Greek, any more than it could in English, what Payne wants it to mean.

Again, Payne is by no means alone in the terrible way he "analyzes" Greek to make it say what he wants it to say. I blame the grammar-translation approach which encourages analysis without fluency, and I think people need to be called to account for this.

Markos wrote: If Paul had written οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω γυναικὶ διδάσκειν καὶ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, ἀλλ' εἶναι ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ.MAYBE this COULD mean what Payne wants it to mean, that it is okay for a woman to teach as long as she does not do it in a way that involves having authority over a man.

We can consider it to always assert both clauses/phrases that it joins.

So I wonder if even your 'MAYBE' is too strong? And it is hard to imagine anybody saying such a thing. If one wanted to ban teaching in an authoritarian way, then one would probably use an adverb or adverbial phrase - eg κῦρίως, αὐθεντικῶς (?). Or if one wanted to forbid a woman to assume the right to teach on her own authority (which is Payne's final take on it - see last sentence of his paper), then conceivably one might say αὐθεντεῖν ὥστε διδάσκειν (although that doesn't sound too good).

In English if you want to refer specifically to the combination of two things or activities, and to exclude the one or the other on their own, then you need to make it clear. 'Jews do not prepare dairy products and meat together/at the same time'. I suspect the same is true in Greek. ἀμφότερος seems to be similar to our 'both' (eg Ephesians 2:14-18). Or how about ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ, for the sense of 'together'?

But I realise your main point was to make the contrast with the word order and emphasis of:

On this point, what do you think of the claim of the complementarians that ἀνδρός is the object of διδάσκειν as well as of αὐθεντεῖν? I find it impossible to read it that way, and none of the older commentators do (Fairbairn, Kelly, Ellicott etc etc). But here is Douglas Moo for example:

The word man (andros), which is plainly the object of the verb have authority (authentein), should be construed as the object of the verb teach also. This construction is grammaticallyunobjectionable..(footnote: .. Greek word order [is] notoriously flexible in such areas)

Andrew Chapman wrote:... what do you think of the claim of the complementarians that ἀνδρός is the object of διδάσκειν as well as of αὐθεντεῖν?

I'd say it is ambiguous (as is the English;) grammar cannot decide the question. An expert in Paul, not in Greek, needs to answer the question of whether Paul thought it was okay for women to teach women.

I feel it is important to note that almost all the grammatical ambiguities in this verse and in verse 15 are found equally so in the KJV as they are in the Greek. I would have had more respect for Payne's position had he stuck to the English. (I happen to think that if you sat Paul down and asked him if it was okay for a women to teach in Church as long as she did so in a humble and non-authoritative way, he would say, sure, I guess so, why not?)

The way that we deal with this problem in my Church, which is about 75% female, is that no one teaches anybody anything. We read the Bible and ask each other questions and let the Holy Spirit teach us.

Even this I find fairly clear - reading it I naturally pause for a moment after επιτρεπω and say αυθεντειν and ανδρος close together. And likewise I also pause at the comma after 'teach' in the KJV translation - I think the 'nor' does that. If you use 'or' instead, as in the ESV:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

it becomes truly ambiguous, and then if you drop the second 'to' as in the NET Bible:

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet.

then it sounds definitely like 'man' is the object of 'teach', which I think is hardly defensible as a translation of:

Can you help me with something, just to check my understanding of the Greek..

On page 251, Payne writes: 'BDF §445 states that the use of οὐδέ in the "correlation of positive and negative members, is of course, admissible".'

Here is BDF §445.3: 'The correlation of negative and positive members is, of course, admissible, though it is not common in the NT. E.g. Jn 4:11 οὔτε ἄντλημα ἔχεις, καὶ φρέαρ ἐστὶν βαθύ (οὐδέ D sy[superscipt s], which seems to be better Greek).'

At first sight, he seems to be simply misquoting BDF, because the example is of οὔτε.. καὶ, not of οὐδέ at all. But I think he is relying on the manuscript variation in the paranthesis, which he cites in a footnote. He seems to be supposing that BDF is saying that:

οὐδέ ἄντλημα ἔχεις, καὶ φρέαρ ἐστὶν βαθύ

would also be an example of the 'correlation of negative and positive members', and even that it would be 'better Greek'.

But I think this variant would mean something like:

'you do not even have a bucket, and the well is deep', and οὐδέ would be an adverb, and not a conjunction at all, let alone a correlative one.

I honestly believe, Andrew, that these categories like "correlative" and "adverbial" are subjective, after-the-fact categories that literally exist only in the mind of the analyzer, both in English and in Greek. The distinctions are too subtle to be of any exegetical value and they are not falsifiable. Having followed your posts on these negative connectives, I have come to believe that this might be the worse area for reading distinctions into the texts that are not there, and this even by competent commentators, to say nothing of someone like Payne. Even Smyth overstates the case:

Now, in Smyth's first example, is there any doubt that οὐδὲ ἥλιον οὐδὲ σελήνην ἄρα νομίζω θεοὺς εἶναι; CAN mean, BASICALLY "Do I therefore think that neither the sun nor the moon are gods?" οὐδὲ . . . οὐδέ, that is, is exactly as correlative as one wants to take it in any given instance.

I've said this a million times. The context, not the particular negative (or positive!) particle used determines the range of hair-splitting, subtle, meanings (really, translations,) that are possible.

So, to answer your question, in my opinion οὐδέ, οὔτε, and καὶ οὐ can ALL, indiscriminately, be EITHER coordinating, correlative, or adverbial, depending on the context, depending really on how one WANTS to translate a given text. It works the exact same way, I think, in English.

Andrew Chapman wrote:οὐδέ ἄντλημα ἔχεις, καὶ φρέαρ ἐστὶν βαθύ

...I think this variant would mean something like:

'you do not even have a bucket, and the well is deep', and οὐδέ would be an adverb, and not a conjunction at all, let alone a correlative one.

Okay, but do you have any doubt that this passage CAN mean, BASICALLY:

There are two issues here. 1. You don't have a bucket. 2. The well is deep.

Thanks, Markos, I just found your reply (must have forgotten to ask for notification.)

I am happy to agree that in general the categories we may put words may be fairly arbitrary, and may not actually exist, in any very fundamental sense. But they may still be useful in a practical way, and if we are talking to one another about a text, it's helpful if we are using these categories in the same sort of way, to mean the same sort of thing.

I don't know if you have read Winer's preface to his grammar, where he makes a case that there had been too great a tendency to claim that words can mean just about anything, and that in fact there are laws that operate and are quite reliable and can enable us to determine quite accurately what a text means? I am too much of a beginner in Greek to be able to assess his claim, but I suppose I think that there could be a natural tendency to get too loose and just let the text say what we want it to.

Now, in Smyth's first example, is there any doubt that οὐδὲ ἥλιον οὐδὲ σελήνην ἄρα νομίζω θεοὺς εἶναι; CAN mean, BASICALLY "Do I therefore think that neither the sun nor the moon are gods?" οὐδὲ . . . οὐδέ, that is, is exactly as correlative as one wants to take it in any given instance.

Well, I would be inclined to read it according to the rules in this case, since the ascensive meaning makes quite good sense, at least from the short extract - do I hold that even the sun and the moon (which we would certainly expect to be gods more than other things..) are not gods? There is a definite, if slight, difference in meaning from your rendering. It depends on how much consistency there is. There are over 180,000 instances of οὐδέ in the TLG, and no doubt Smyth had read a lot of them, so if οὐδέ means 'not even' when it starts a clause like this, with no previous negative, in the other 10,000 cases or whatever, it almost certainly does here too.

Is there not a pattern of usage of οὐδέ - that it is used one way when it is stands between two clauses (or words or sentences) - this we call coordinating, if the elements joined are of the same type - and another way when it stands in the middle of a clause, or at the start of the sentence as in the example above - this we call adverbial. That seems to be a real difference and not just a matter of terminology.

In between, there seems to be a third category (BDAG οὐδέ sec. 2) where it stands between two clauses of different types, where it is technically an adverb I think, but looks quite coordinating. And οὐδέ γάρ seems in-betweenish too. We use the English word 'either', which according to my dictionary, is an adverb which 'indicates .. a link with a statement just made' - which makes it a conjunctive adverb, one could say. Structurally an adverb, functionally a conjunction, it seems to me.

Okay, but do you have any doubt that this passage CAN mean, BASICALLY:

There are two issues here. 1. You don't have a bucket. 2. The well is deep.

I think there is a definite difference between this and 'Are you crazy, you have just told me to ask you for water, and you don't even have a bucket, do you?' (That's too strong, obviously, but there is a hint of that if there's an 'even'.)

Wow, the intricacies of NT exegesis! Seems to me that Payne is basically right in taking the two negatived parts as “convey[ing] a single idea in sharp contrast to the following ἀλλά statement”, just as they do in the Polybius quote. As I read it, Paul is more or less equating teaching with exercising authority over a man. He could never have imagined his words being parsed so minutely, any more than Jesus did. There’s no suggestion of its being ok if women teach only women and children, or somehow teach in a non-authoritative way.

Where Payne goes wrong is in separating the two components in such a way as to make the second limit (rather than simply elaborate or expand) the first. “I don’t allow a woman to teach” is not qualified by the follow-up (“and/or to be a man’s boss”); as Markos and others have objected, the copulative ουδε couldn't convey that. Rather, the second phrase gives some precision, some amplification: women exercising authority over men is what women teaching would amount to. The quoted Polybius is a good parallel: binding themselves with oaths and treaties is what would be entailed by partnering with Rome. It’s essentially a single notion, whose permitted opposite, of course, is “staying quiet.”

It is possible in principle to take διδασκειν and αυθεντειν ανδρος as properly bipartite, denoting two different activities, but that (as Payne effectively says, only he misconstrues the nature of the linkage) would be an excessively literal reading out of keeping with Paul's manner of writing (he writes vigorously and rhetorically but not always quite logically), and the alternative I favor is well supported. It's a kind of hendiadys. (I wouldn't put a comma after επιτρεπω.)

Or that's my take on it, as a reader both of Paul and of other Greek, and with no theological axe to grind.

mwh wrote:Where Payne goes wrong is in separating the two components in such a way as to make the second limit (rather than simply elaborate or expand) the first.

I agree with this, but then I think that you may be doing a similar thing by in effect making the first term limit the second. In other words, you seem to be saying, or at least one might deduce from what you say, that if the second term is only a kind of explanation of the first, then Paul is not concerned about women exercising authority over men in ways other than teaching. It seems to me that the prohibition on the exercise of authority over men stands in its own right. It could perhaps serve at the same time as a kind of explanation of the prohibition on teaching. Personally, I see two themes running through from verses 11 to 15 - learning/teaching/deception and submission/exercise of authority/order of creation; with quietness as the counterpart.

I fully agree that two terms can merge semantically to some degree, especially if they are close in meaning. In English, I think we use 'or' when they are close, as in say, 'they had no courage or valour'. But we would say 'they had no courage, nor effective armor'. I have the impression that οὐδέ can be used for both of these, corresponding perhaps to the more continuative or more adversative use of δέ.

With regard to teaching and the exercise of authority, it seems to me that they are about as close as are the jobs of a schoolteacher and of a policeman. They may have elements in common, especially on a bad day at school (but no power of arrest and detention), but these are quite different professions, one concerning the communication and impartation of knowledge, understanding, skills and so on, and the other concerning the maintenance of order and the upholding of the law.

Both teaching and the exercise of authority over a man contrast with being in quietness, and certainly the three elements combine together into some sort of overall conception - that is why they are joined together in a single sentence, one might say.

Andrew - You may well be right. I may have been overstating the quasi-equivalence of the two. But I do think they bleed into one another, and I do wonder whether Paul envisaged women exercising authority over men outside of the preaching role. And hendiadys is very Greek, after all. Literalism often misleads. Basically Paul does not want women getting uppity; for his modern-day counterparts we could turn to parts of the Moslem world.

I don’t think we need get hung up on ουδε. If the statement were positive rather than negative, it would run διδασκειν δε γυναικι επιτρεπω και αυθεντειν ανδρος. That’s to say, ουδε is more the negative equivalent of και than of δε. English idiom would make do with the single negative and would use “or”: “I won't have women teaching or being a man's boss …”; “nor” would be overdoing it (and rather archaic, which Paul never is). In Greek, however, a negatived main verb carries other negatives in train, so there’s no real alternative to ουδε. It’s simply a matter of how closely related we think the prohibited duo is/are. Agreed, neither one limits the other; but the second may spell out the implications of the first.

Incidentally, I’d second your endorsement of Smyth against Markos as to ουδε … ουδε never being used as correlatives. These distinctions are meaningful, and ουδε does not behave like ουτε. To suggest that the difference is merely euphonic, not semantic, flies in the face of Greek usage. (Admittedly the two sometimes get confused in manuscripts, just as δε and τε do. But there's rarely much difficulty in sorting out which is right.) But the point is irrelevant to the passage under discussion, where correlative usage does not enter. (And Payne on Jn.4.11 is talking through his hat: you are quite right there.)

Thanks, Michael. The grammars generally say that οὐδέ is οὐ δέ, but go on to say that it has taken over in negative sentences some of the functions of καὶ in positive sentences. Stephen Levinsohn says that he sees οὐδέ as the equivalent of additive καὶ, which he distinguishes from conjunctive καὶ. He thinks, as I understand it, that there is a fundamental difference between additive καὶ and continuative δέ, but I have the impression that others doubt that there is a practical difference. The thing I am inclined to hold on to is that οὐδέ has the ability to cope with joining two terms that are not in very close correspondence - Ellicott writes on this in his commentary on Thessalonians at notes on translation, 1 Thess 2.3 - where he suggests 'nor yet' for this use.

I don’t think we need get hung up on ουδε.

By way of explanation, I am trying to write a response to Payne's paper, so am going in to a lot more detail than I otherwise would. I think οὐδέ is quite a simple little word. As a conjunction, it just connects things together, or adds one to another. Its exact force is understood from the context. Anybody who reads Greek knows that 1 Timothy 2.12 can't mean what Payne says it means, but how to demonstrate it to those who don't read Greek?

What do you think about the word order in 1 Timothy 2.12? I had a look at Kostenberger's 50 examples of οὐδέ joining two infinitives and there are only a couple of examples where the first infinitive comes before the οὐ. Here is one:

where I would grant that the two infinitives seem to run together, at least at first sight. The other is

Josephus, Antiquities XIV.346:ὁ δὲ Ὑρκανὸν ἀπολιπεῖν οὐκ ἠξίου οὐδέ παρακινδυνεύειν τἀδελφῷ·[Phanuel,] however, did not think it right to desert Hyracanus or to endanger his brother {Loeb note: The second motive is not mentioned in B.J.}

Herod was Phanuel's brother, and was in a different place to Hyrcanus and Phanuel, and these were two different issues. Here, 'nor to endanger..' could be good, I think.

But my question to you regarding word order is: do you think it possible that ἀνδρος is the object of διδάσκεῖν in 1 Timothy 2.12? Markos has defended that as a possibility, and I think on a B-Greek thread he (or possibly another) said something about 'leaping'. But that's quite a leap it seems to me..

There certainly is a practical difference btwn kai and de. In a positive sentence we’d have kai not de, as I said earlier.

Terms linked by oude may or may not be in close correspondence. In the 1 Tim. case, I’ve had my say. That Polyb instance seems a good comparandum (though not in the way that Payne wd wish). Formally in such a construction the two vbs denote separate activities, obviously; just how separate is the only question here. The Greek in itself is of no help in judging how distinct these particular two are.

I’d consider the immediate epistolary context, the contrast between men and women in the preceding lines. 8-10: men are to pray with raised hands, women are to dress modestly and decorously – he gets really worked up over this. (Women don’t even get to pray?) Then 11: a woman is to learn (note μανθανετω, the opposite of didaskein) in quietness, completely submissive (how distinct are these two, in context? Not much if at all, I'd say). 12 is strictly superfluous, it merely reinforces 11. For it follows from 11 that a woman is not to give instruction (the opposite of learning) or lord it over a man (the opposite of submissiveness). The two are effectively equivalent. The proper relationship of woman to man (wife to husband) is that of student to teacher.

The word order is a little unusual, but hardly more so than didaskein gunaiki epitrepw (w/o neg.) would be; the fronting of the dependent infin throws weight on it:“Giving instruction is a no-no for a woman” or “For a woman to have a teaching role is something I just won’t have.”(There’s a book by Kenneth Dover on Gk Word Order, perhaps you know it.) The statement is potentially complete at ouk epitrepw, then the second prohibited infin is tacked on as an expansion. The two form a unity, constituting the opposite of what is the appropriate role for a woman.

Could andros be (or function as) the object of didaskein? This is not so much a word-order question as a syntactical one. The answer is an unequivocal No. It would be different if each verb took the same case; then and only then could the noun be common to both. Only in English is there ambiguity. (And it makes no difference whether we say “or” or “nor”; in Greek it’s the same, and it’s only English that vacillates.)

Could andros be (or function as) the object of didaskein? This is not so much a word-order question as a syntactical one. The answer is an unequivocal No. It would be different if each verb took the same case; then and only then could the noun be common to both. Only in English is there ambiguity. (And it makes no difference whether we say “or” or “nor”; in Greek it’s the same, and it’s only English that vacillates.)

Mounce [Pastoral Epistles, 123] cites Smyth 1634, which reads 'The case of an object common to two verbs is generally that demanded by the nearer'. As an example, Smyth gives:οὐ δεῖ τοῖς παιδοτρίβαις ἐγκαλεῖν οὐδ` ἐκβάλλειν ἐκ τῶν πόλεων [Plato Gorgias 460 d.]we ought not to complain against the trainers or expel them from our cities.

I guess ἐγκαλεῖν takes the dative, and ἐκβάλλειν the accusative.

It seems to me, contra Mounce, that this is different, because here the object is established in the first infinitive phrase, and assumed in the second. In the case of 1 Timothy 2.12, we don't know anything about an object until we hit the second phrase, so we have already taken it that διδάσκειν is being used absolutely.

One might say that the final phrase focuses the thought to make it more specific - from Jesus Christ to Jesus Christ crucified. But it doesn't limit - he is still knowing Jesus Christ among them, as well as more specifically Him crucified. So one might perhaps distinguish between focus-specification and limiting specification. But I was wondering if there already exists a language to make these distinctions.

It seems to me that it takes a lot more work to achieve a limiting specification. For example (the οὐδέ is incidental):

Here he starts by saying that they speak wisdom; then he chops out certain types of wisdom that they are not speaking with the negative noun phrases; then in contrast describes the type of specific wisdom they are speaking.

see also Proverbs 30.30 and Isaiah 64.3. This is common in secular writers like Plutarch, and I thought this might be a rule, that the first verb would be immediately before οὐδέ in these cases, until I found, with one term in between:

Plutarch, Brotherly Love 487.F.2οὐκέτι κρατεῖν ἐν τοῖς μείζοσιν οὐδὲ καταπαύειν τὸ φιλόνικον δύνανται καὶ φιλό-τιμον... until they are no longer able to control or subdue their contentious and ambitious spirit in more important matters.

Finally, one with two terms in between, and with some similarity to 1 Tim 2.12:

Plutarch, Whether the Affections 501.D.9οὕτως οἱ κατὰ ψυχὴν χειμῶνες βαρύτεροι στείλασθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐκ ἐῶντες οὐδ’ ἐπιστῆσαι τεταραγμένον τὸν λογισμόν·.. so these storms of the soul are more serious which do not allow a man to compose or to calm his disturbed reason;

I did wonder if στείλασθαι might be absolute here, but Carl Conrad at B-Greek thought otherwise, and I think he is right.

So, as Markos said, it certainly seems to be possible for a verb to reach over quite a few terms including οὐδέ to reach its object.

My remaining question is whether this is the sort of thing which one is more likely to find in an Atticist - as Plutarch is sometimes described - than in the New Testament. What does an Atticist style look like - is it more formal, composed, less like speech, even convoluted sometimes?

What you’re after, if andros is to have any chance of having a relation to didaskein, is two verbs separated by oude when (i) the verbs take different cases (as here acc. and gen.) and (ii) the second of the verbs is followed by a noun (or noun-equivalent) in the appropriate case for that verb and not for the first yet is clearly to be understood as relating to the first as well as the second. In or out of NT (but in ordinary prose; there may be arguable instances in high verse).

Seek and ye shall not find? Regardless, it’s an impossibly forced reading. If Paul had meant to limit the prohibited teaching to teaching a man he’d have said didaskein andra. It’s women teaching (tout court) he’s against. At the risk of repeating myself, context and grammar both make that quite clear; to read it any other way is to torture the plain meaning of the greek. I don’t really understand why you’re persisting with what seems to me a non-starter.

I don’t really understand why you’re persisting with what seems to me a non-starter.

Well, many leading commentators on the passage are arguing for it. It seems to have been first proposed by Douglas Moo in 1981, was stated as fact by Knight in the New International Greek Testament Commentary (1999), repeated by Bill Mounce in the Word Biblical Commentary (2000), and by Schreiner in 'Women in the Church', the leading complementarian study of the passage. They all rely on the same two items of support: Acts 8.21 and Smyth 1634. Markos also said that he thinks it is possible. I am trying to be fair and am conscious that my knowledge of Greek is insufficient to make a judgement. I have looked at many of the earlier commentators, and none of them even consider the possibility that ἀνδρός is the object of διδάσκειν. For example, Origen cites the verse as:

I do indeed think that Paul has the Genesis story in mind, but Chrysostom (and Paul? and we?) maybe need to be reminded that Mary Magdalene, ἡ τοῖς ἀποστόλοις ἀπόστολος, in a sense reverses the sin of Eve by teaching the men the right message (Χριστὸς ἀνέστη.)

mwh wrote:But all this shows is that...NT commentators no longer know how to read Greek.

As Andrew points out, I happen to think that ἀνδρός may in fact modify both verbs, but in general your statement is, regrettably, more true than it ought to be.

I just found what seems to be an example of hendiadys with οὐδέ. I don't mean of course that this has anything much to do with 1 Timothy 2.12, but it's interesting to me that it can do this, in much the same way as καὶ, it seems to me:

On reflection, I don't think it's quite 'the weight of their attack', because it must be the weight of the elephants which is in view here. Perhaps 'unable to stand their weight in the attack' might be closer to it.

It seems to me that there is an all pervading logical fallacy in Payne's paper, which is apparently called the fallacy of the undistributed middle. In its simplest form, it runs, say '1) all cats are animals 2) this beast in front of me is an animal 3) therefore this beast in front of me is a cat'; whereas in fact it may be a dog or a budgerigar. [Technically, in the theory of logic, the middle term is animal. It is undistributed because not all animals are cats. Or so I understand it.]

It seems to me that Payne's argument goes like this. 1) In almost every case (or so he claims) Paul uses οὐδέ to combine two elements into 'a single idea'; 2) therefore in 1 Tim 2.12, it is highly probably that the two elements will combine into a single idea; 3) his proposed rendering of 1 Tim 2.12 expresses a single idea; 4) therefore this is the true rendering.

But this is illogical. Even if 2) and 3) were accepted, 4) would not follow, because there might be other renderings that also express a single idea.

The OED defines a sentence as: 'A series of words in connected speech or writing, forming the grammatically complete expression of a single thought;..' - which I think shows that it is entirely normal for different elements to combine to express a single idea or conception. But they can do that in all sorts of different ways.

I am thinking that the most important question to ask with regard to Payne's thesis is: 'Does the addition of the 2nd element extend or restrict the meaning or referent?' For example, if we start with 'I do not permit cats' and then add dogs; so that we have 'I do not permit cats and dogs (and the likes)'; then we have extended the restriction. It could perhaps be expressed as a single idea of not permitting household pets. We could not then say 'but I do permit cats.'

On the other hand, if we add the second idea 'black'; then we get the single idea 'I do not permit black cats'; and then we can say 'but I do permit cats in general'.

Andrew Chapman wrote:It seems to me that there is an all pervading logical fallacy in Payne's paper, which is apparently called the fallacy of the undistributed middle. In its simplest form, it runs, say '1) all cats are animals 2) this beast in front of me is an animal 3) therefore this beast in front of me is a cat'; whereas in fact it may be a dog or a budgerigar. [Technically, in the theory of logic, the middle term is animal. It is undistributed because not all animals are cats. Or so I understand it.]

It seems to me that Payne's argument goes like this. 1) In almost every case (or so he claims) Paul uses οὐδέ to combine two elements into 'a single idea'; 2) therefore in 1 Tim 2.12, it is highly probably that the two elements will combine into a single idea; 3) his proposed rendering of 1 Tim 2.12 expresses a single idea; 4) therefore this is the true rendering.

But this is illogical. Even if 2) and 3) were accepted, 4) would not follow, because there might be other renderings that also express a single idea.

Yes, you've nailed it. As I said from the outset, Payne's article combines faulty logic with an impossible understanding of Greek.

In the article you are writing refuting Payne, you should be able to point out the flawed logic even to people who don't know the Greek. The key will be showing those same people how it appears Payne himself does not know Greek. I don't like saying that, but I cannot see any other conclusion.

As they wished none of the kings and princes to despair of gaining their help and alliance, they did not desire to run in harness with Rome and engage themselves by oaths and treaties, but preferred to remain unembarrassed and able to reap profit from any quarter. [Loeb]

Leaving aside his 'perfectly', there are certainly similarities in the syntactical structure.

He says this is epexegetical: 'The content after οὐδέ clarifies that ‘to run in harness’ is to ‘engage themselves by oaths and treaties [to Rome]’.

I don't actually accept this, as I don't see any proof that οὐδέ ever has that kind of force; but I am happy to agree that the two ideas are pretty close here. I just saw that Liddell and Scott suggest 'combine' for συνδυάζειν in this text. Oaths are maybe taking it further, so it might be a case of 'and what's more', perhaps.

Even leave aside the fact that this is not the same kind of single idea as Payne's proposal for 1 Tim 2.12, since in this case the referent is neither extended nor limited, if I can put it like that.

The thing I want to get to is that Payne says that because this Polybius text expresses a single idea, and because it has a similar syntactical structure to 1 Tim 2.12 ('this closest structural parallel'), 'it favors interpreting [1 Tim 2.12's] οὐδέ construction as conveying a single idea, too.' (Payne p. 245)

In other words, the closer the syntactical structures of the two texts, the more similar will be the semantic relationships within each text. But these are completely separate matters, or almost so, so far as I can see. The semantic relationships depend primarily on what the referents are, not on how the sentence is strung together, surely?

'I like bread and butter and jam'

has the same syntactical structure as:

'I like cabbages and pears and spring onions'.

The first is probably one idea, the second looks like three. You can spread butter on bread and jam on butter and make it into a single item, but you probably won't be combining the other three items into one.

Andrew Chapman wrote:The semantic relationships depend primarily on what the referents are, not on how the sentence is strung together, surely?

'I like bread and butter and jam'

has the same syntactical structure as:

'I like cabbages and pears and spring onions'.

The first is probably one idea, the second looks like three.

For what it’s worth (apparently very little), I agree, as should be clear from my post of more than a month ago (June 5): “Formally in such a construction the two vbs denote separate activities, obviously; just how separate is the only question here. The Greek in itself is of no help in judging how distinct these particular two are.”

I have question about the DATE of Payne's article. Is this just a reprint of something Payne wrote eons ago or is this a new phase of the argument? In other other words, I need to know if this was already addressed by A. Köstenberger in either his 1995 analysis of the syntax or the 2005 2nd ed of "Women in the Church …" . I don't have either of those books on hand. So I am wondering if Köstenberger already addressed this issue.

POSTSCRIPTI put in a request for 2005 2nd ed of "Women in the Church …" , I think a critique of Köstenberger's analysis of the syntax would be far more interesting than Payne's.

Where Payne goes wrong is in separating the two components in such a way as to make the second limit (rather than simply elaborate or expand) the first.

Which is why I think we should drop the discussion of syntax and take a look at parallelism. What Payne is describing (see his first several examples) is negated parallelism. The fact that it is negated is more or less irrelevant. On biblical parallelism see anything you can find by Andrei Desnitsky.

n the 18th century, the Anglican bishop, Robert Lowth, in his lectures “On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews” (published in 1753) argued that there were three types of Hebrew parallelism: synonymous parallelism, antithetical parallelism, and synthetic or constructive parallelism. The first two types are exemplified in Psalm 2:5-6:

A1 “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,A2 Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;B1 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,B2 But the way of the wicked will perish” (ESV).

A1 and A2 are a good example of synonymous parallelism, while B1 and B2 are clearly antithetical parallelism. Lowth’s third category was a kind of catch-all for the many instances that did not seem to be either synonymous or antithetical.

Although Lowth’s analysis was widely accepted for two centuries, in the 1980s, James Kugel and Robert Alter challenged the received Lowthian orthodoxy. They rejected Lowth’s category of synonymous parallelism, pointing out that even when the two lines seem to be saying something roughly similar, they are never perfectly equivalent, and that the difference, however small, when viewed in light of the similarity of the two lines, produces a new meaning that goes beyond what each line contributes individually.

James Kugel's label for this was “subjunction,” i.e., line B is subjoined to line A. To explain this, he invented the formula, “A, and what’s more, B.” The first line (A) is the primary statement; the second line (B) adds new information or a new perspective. (James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981].)

A few years later, Robert Alter took Kugel’s approach and moved the ball down the field a few more yards. He fleshed out the specific ways in which the B line heightens, intensifies, focuses and even dramatizes the A line. Alter speaks of “parallelism of specification” and “parallelism of intensification,” although he does acknowledge that, occasionally, one finds “static synonymity.” Alter’s main point is that “literary expression abhors complete parallelism … usage always introducing small wedges of difference between closely akin terms.” He quotes Viktor Shklovsky who wrote that “the purpose of parallelism … is to transfer the usual perception of an object into the sphere of a new perception – that is, to make a unique semantic modification.” (Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry [New York: Basic Books, 1985], 3-26).

More recently, the Dutch scholar J. P. Fokkelman vividly explained the Kugel-Alter theory of parallelism with the helpful metaphor of binoculars. Just as binoculars provide depth perception by bringing two nearly identical but nevertheless distinct pictures together to form a new unity, so in Hebrew parallelism the similarities and the differences between the two lines complement one another, and the result is that whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Parallelism helps us to see in stereo. (J. P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Poetry: An Introductory Guide [transl. Ineke Smit; Louisville: WJK, 2001], 78-79.)

I have question about the DATE of Payne's article. Is this just a reprint of something Payne wrote eons ago or is this a new phase of the argument? In other other words, I need to know if this was already addressed by A. Köstenberger in either his 1995 analysis of the syntax or the 2005 2nd ed of "Women in the Church …" . I don't have either of those books on hand. So I am wondering if Köstenberger already addressed this issue.

Even if οὐδέ were joining equivalent expressions here, as Payne claims, it hardly helps his case. Obviously, if two ideas are the same, then adding one to the other leaves you with just one. This isn't the same type of 'single idea' as he is arguing for in 1 Tim 2.12.

But in this text especially, they are not the same at all. The whole point of the following discussion about the seed of Abraham is that it was only one line that were the inheritors of the promises. Ishmael and Esau were excluded.